Freyja’s outburst earns her little more than a dispassionate stare, the smile dropping from their lips in an instant. Their eyes start to brighten behind their shades, but a blink and a sideways glance halts that process, their next unhurried drag accompanied by a slight dimming as their eyes cycle through shades of red.
They watch as she springs into motion, all of her frantic with worry and desperate hope, and make no move to follow. A sort of calm has settled over them. It feels like clarity. It feels like the precursor to one hell of a storm.
The sun has only just risen, but the sky is already darkening, the clouds rolling in black and heavy with rain. The Hound doesn’t spare more than a passing glance for the sky - their thoughts are occupied elsewhere, the rest of them on autopilot while the gears in their mind turn.
The conclusion is inevitable. It clicks into place, and they know, instantly, exactly what they are going to do. The line between the present moment and their goal illuminates, stretching into existence as a perfect, unbroken beacon, painted neon-red against the gray of their thoughts.
But first, they finish their cigarette. While it burns, they tug at the fingers of their glove, loosening it enough that they can slide it carefully off their metal hand without it catching. Then, folding the glove over itself, they tuck it in the pocket of their coat.
The cigarette fizzles at the filter. They take it from their mouth and flick the spent remains carelessly over the side of the cliff, pausing a moment to watch it fall. Hardly half a second passes before Freyja is there in its place, still worried, still afraid, but with her demeanor turned loud and demanding, as though her volume can mask her fear.
They turn to her, finally abandoning their casual sprawl and rolling into a crouch, then to their feet, taking two short steps to close the distance between them even as they shrug out of their coat. The wind is cold, but they are colder, and it will only get in their way.
“No,” they say simply. Fluidly, they lower into a crouch once more, bringing them eye-to-eye with her. Then, with short, uncomplicated movements, they take the arm of their shades between two fingers and slide them off their face, flicking their wrist to fold the other arm in before tucking the folded-up glasses within the leather bundle in their arms. “I’m not going with you, Freyja.”
They say it firmly, but not unkindly, meeting her eyes with unflinching calm. “But– you do need to go. If you stay, they will kill you. I will kill you. Do you understand?”
There is a stilted sort of gentleness to them as The Hound shakes their jacket out and settles it around her shoulders, over her wings, fingers feather-light as they smooth it down. The first scattered droplets start to fall, staining the dark leather and running warm across their knuckles when they brush her cheek. They say nothing of it, only shifting their hand to frame her jaw, calluses rubbing rough over smooth skin. “Don’t do that to me, angel. Get out of here while you still can.”
(It is a lie, but a kind one. She doesn’t need to know that they’ll forget. She doesn’t need to know that it will mean nothing to them, tomorrow. That it means nothing to them, now. That this is kinder than they are capable of being. It does not matter, so long as she believes it.)
